Grupenet

There’s a new Web 2.0 startup by the name of Thoof. Many are describing it as a combination of Digg and Wikipedia, but there’s much more going on under the hood. Thoof is currently in beta, so the only way you’re getting in is with an invitation(see below). Thoof is now open to the public. I had the privilege to interview the founder of Thoof and ask him a few questions.

Before I get into the interview I’d like to let you know that I’ve got beta invitations to Thoof. If you’d like one, comment on this post saying you’d like an invite. An invite will be sent to your email address promptly. Now on to the interview!

Grupenet: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I’m really interested in Thoof and what’s going on behind the scenes. What was the beginning point for the start of Thoof? Did you start out by yourself or were there others involved?

Ian: I came up with the initial idea myself, but I quickly found three other co-founders because I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this alone. Really I’ve been thinking for a long time about the problem of how to find useful and accurate news in a decentralized democratic way, and Thoof is the result.

Grupenet: What makes Thoof different than other “Web 2.0″ news sites such as Digg, Reddit, or del.icio.us?

Ian: Two major differences. Firstly, users can collaboratively edit stories, so if you see something wrong, you can fix it. Secondly, we have a very clever and unique algorithm that can figure out what your interests are and show you stories that will interest you. We believe that our approach is way ahead of anything out there now, or likely to come out in the near future. See this blog entry for some details of why we have such confidence.

Grupenet: Are there any new features we may see before Thoof is released to the public?

Ian: We have obtained a lot of feedback from users, and we are trying to implement as many suggestions as we can in the time available before we go public. We will continue to do this after we launch. We hope to be a very “user directed” company, which means being very responsive to feedback.

Grupenet: How do you plan to make money with Thoof? I noticed there are absolutely no advertisements.

Ian: There aren’t now, but there will be. They will be targeted, and not obtrusive.

Grupenet: How will spam be filtered? Are the users going to be able to mark stories as spam?

Ian: Hopefully our targeting algorithm will be able to thwart spam, but if not we may allow users to flag spam.

Grupenet: Once again, thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview with me. I have high hopes for Thoof.

Ian: Thanks! So do we!